


As I Do

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [161]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Cute, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Lapsed Jewish Maximoffs, Philosophy, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Vision thinks too much, What it means to be human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 19:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14700891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Wanda, he knows, more than most, understands that logical reasons do not mean a logical outcome. That is, after all, why she lost her brother. Why she fought for Sergeant Barnes. Why she is, now, locked in the Raft, in a straitjacket, in a collar.And, Vision knows, why they locked her in a straitjacket is logical: allowed to move she could level the prison and drown everyone but those she chose to lift to the skies. But, Vision knows, doing this they have not helped her, have not helped themselves. They have harmed her, harmed any likelihood of her fighting at their side ever again, and he … he thinks he hates it, that these two threads of logic should exist side by side and yet be incompatible in the minds of some.





	As I Do

**Author's Note:**

> SO. AT LONG LAST. The counterpart to _[Human](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14550894)_. Where that was Wanda POV this is Vision POV and WOW is my boy wordy as hell. Some of this fic is just scenes from _Human_ but from Vision's perspective. Others are completely new, or extended scenes. It's also missing some scenes from _Human_ so you should be able to read each of these and get different experiences.
> 
> Music this time was, again, [a nightcore version of Coyote Kisses _Six Shooter_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOdhAyGjC54), [Nelly Furtado's _Maneater_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IfB76ymlHE), [a Nightcore version of _Wild Thing_ by Jaxson Gamble](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JztAgy5Oya8) and.... [a nightcore version of _Diggy Diggy Hole_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxNtvyTt8Z0). 
> 
> Please forgive me.
> 
> As before this fic doesn't really have spoilers, exactly, but it does have stuff that if you've not watched the film yet won't necessarily make much sense, and that if you have, may Hurt You. You have been forewarned.

_ And what do you want? _

_ For people to see you, as I do. _

 

* * *

 

There are many things Vision means when he says those words. He means:  _ I want them to see you for what you are; beautiful and terrible and  _ **_good_ ** _. _ He means: _ I want them to see your power, and not fear you. _ He means: _ I want them to see your strength. _

He means:  _ I want them to love you as I do. _

But, he thinks, Wanda is not ready to hear those things, or, maybe, he is not ready to say them.

It is… odd, he supposes, to exist as he does. He knows things - words, facts, places, people - but emotions are… not beyond him, no, not quite. He knows they exist, he remembers Wanda’s grief at Pietro’s death as sharply as a knife, and knows the feeling that suffused him when first he came to be was wonder, and knows the feeling that fills him when he sees his teammates is love but he does not know how to explain these feelings, sometimes, even to himself.

So instead, he tucks these feelings away, locks them into logic and purpose so he has a reason for them as much as he does anything else. He cares for Wanda because she is a part of the team - that he cares for her more than he does the others makes sense, does it not? They are both new to the team and new to knowing the others, they each have no one else, their powers and abilities - perhaps their very lives - are linked. That he should love her more than the others makes sense, it is not bias, but logic, surely?

And then, he realises his mistakes. His illogic. That logical reasons do not mean a logical outcome.

He was right: Wanda was not ready to hear those words, because she would have laughed. He was not ready to say those words, because he did not fully understand what they meant.

Wanda, he knows, more than most, understands that logical reasons do not mean a logical outcome. That is, after all, why she lost her brother. Why she fought for Sergeant Barnes. Why she is, now, locked in the Raft, in a straitjacket, in a collar.

And, Vision knows, why they locked her in a straitjacket is logical: allowed to move she could level the prison and drown everyone but those she chose to lift to the skies. But, Vision knows, doing this they have not helped her, have not helped themselves. They have harmed her, harmed any likelihood of her fighting at their side ever again, and he … he thinks he hates it, that these two threads of logic should exist side by side and yet be incompatible in the minds of some.

 

* * *

 

The Raft is emptied.

That is not hard to do, Vision knows. There are few prisoners, few guards. Fewer checks on the prison. It is secret in its location, secret in its methods, secret in all things but for its existence. He imagines he could have entered undetected if he so wished, but he keeps to the laws as best he can - given his very existence is debatably in violation of several - and he did not.

Now the Raft is emptied, and he does not know where half the team is. Where Wanda is.

He… he thinks it is hope he feels, when he thinks of Wanda, and thinks that maybe she is safe.

 

* * *

 

_ I looked into your head and saw annihilation. _

_ Look again. _

 

* * *

 

He tore Ultron out of the net out of love. At least, that is what he thinks it is. He loved Ultron - loves, arguably, because the love has not ended just because Ultron has. Ultron was a beautiful creature, and a unique one and a terrible one. He meant terrible things for the world. But he was and strived to be and Vision cannot hate him for being all he was made to be and not and more all at once. Is that not what he is himself?

He tore Ultron from the net out of love and now he scours it for traces of the team, for Wanda. He thinks: if the UN knew he could do this they would have him searching for the rest, but even if they do know they have not asked. Maybe they think that having the new team hunting down the old sets a bad image. Maybe they think the new team hunting down the old will not work. Certainly, Tony did not succeed, in the end.

He scours the net, traces datastreams, searches image after image for them. He thinks: I must find them, if only to know that they are well after my mistake. He thinks: I could not bear it if they came to harm because of me. He thinks: Wanda. He thinks: I must apologise. 

He thinks, when he finds them: I should not see them, the UN will find them in my wake.

He thinks: I cannot bear not to see them.

 

* * *

 

A human face is hard. Human skin is easy, he learns to make that as rapidly as he has learned to make clothes to cover himself with, but a human face… he knows of the uncanny valley, but he did not think he would ever  _ be _ it.

He does not show the others what he works on. He tests it himself and checks in reflections and frowns at his mannequin face in the mirror. He tries to make human skin cover his face evenly, smoothly, in the same colour throughout, but then light imbalances it and in evening it out he undoes shadows and looks… wrong. Or: he gets it even but there is something lacking, some colour to the cheeks, some delicacy to the eyelids, some crinkle to the skin of the lips that he misses, and looks more like a photograph than a person.

Eventually he finds it. He cellshades his face along the lines he was given, creates a skintone just uneven enough to look real but not so much as to resemble a clown. Then: hair, eyelashes, eyebrows, but those textures he has observed over and over in all his teammates. He finds something that works, something pale and simple and easy to form, creates strands and then lets them simply  _ be _ and take on tangles and shapes and lengths of their own. 

He does not tell Tony or Colonel Rhodes of his project. They do not ask him. 

He thinks, in the wake of the Accords, the team is even more broken apart than the two groups that fought for and against them. They have each become their own islands, disconnected and alone.

Vision does not like that,  _ alone _ . Is he not so already, without another like him in the world? Is not aloneness something more likely to cause harm than much else? Is not aloneness, loneliness, so singularly cruel a thing to creatures which need others and contact and companionship?

But then, he thinks again. It is good that he is alone: it allows him to make this face, these hands, these clothes. It is good he is alone, because it means he can work on this project. This project that means: maybe he will not be alone.

He wonders what Wanda will think, to see him with a human face. If she will even recognise him.

 

* * *

 

Wanda recognises him. Of course she does: she can see his mind, can recognise it even from a distance. She spots him even before he walks into the cafe she’s in, before he’s ordered his drink, long before he crosses the room to her and asks, “Is this seat free?”

“Vision,” she says, and her voice is soft and tired and he can see burns at her neck, slow healing, but there. His voice chokes away, like there is a lump of lead in his throat.

“Sit,” she says. “I don’t bite.”

He sits. His cup rests in his hands and he watches.

“Have you come to take me in?” she asks. “Because I am not going back to the Raft. I will fight for the freedom I have.”

“No!” Vision says. “No.” But he doesn’t know what to say after that, and falls to silence. He tries a sip of his cup - ordinary breakfast tea, because he remembers how much Wanda loves tea of all kinds - and tries to parse the taste.

Wanda sighs and sets her cup down. “Why are you here, Vizh? Why should I trust you?”

He looks at his cup. He thinks. Questions are easy, answers are hard. He knows better now, that his answers are not always the right ones. He thinks, clips back his answers to the simplest ideas, the ones he knows Wanda will see in his mind and trust in and believe in. The ones which are the most true above all.

“I wanted to see if you were well,” he says. “I could not- I did not know of the Raft. What they did to you, to the others. I am sorry. I never meant for that.”

Wanda watches him. She’s curled deeper into her seat, curled like a cat, her cup tucked in her hands and held close to her chest. No steam comes from it; Vision wonders if it is gone cold, or simply a cold drink. 

“You have a new face,” she says eventually.

“Yes.” He looks down at his cup, looks back up to her, takes a sip. “It was… hard to make. Faces are difficult. But I did not want them to find you because I did.”

Wanda lifts up her cup with one hand, her other hand rises to her neck, rubs the slow-healing burns there. 

_ They electrocuted you, _ Vision wants to say, but dares not break this fragile peace between them.

“Why did you try to find me?” Wanda asks. “I put you through six floors, Vizh.”

He frowns and sets his cup down. “But you didn’t want to hurt me,” he says. “And you didn’t.”

 

* * *

 

He calls ahead next time. He’s flying with all speed across the Atlantic to check something for Tony and he knows that once he has reported back he is free to do as he wills - for a little while anyway. So he finds the number he stored to memory and calls Wanda.

“Vizh?” she asks, and he cannot help the smile that spreads across his face.

“I was going to be in the area,” he says. “Tony wanted me to investigate something. When I’m done, would you like to catch up?”

There is a pause, and he does not begrudge her it. It was because of him she was imprisoned, because of Tony’s decision and his decision and no choice of her own until she wished simply enough to leave.

“The same cafe as last time?” she says. “In… two hours time?”

Two hours, he thinks, may be cutting it a bit fine but he does not care. She has agreed, she has offered a chance. He will not refuse it.

“I’ll be there,” he says. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

The cafe is warm when he arrives. His coat is not quite complete, but he doesn’t much care, he’s very nearly late, and it was troublesome enough to find time to put his human face on and create human clothes before getting on the right bus; to try to fix the mistakes he’d made on the move in public would have been too much a risk.

Instead he waits until he’s with Wanda, sat in a far corner of the cafe, and fixes the blurred edges and buttons into something more akin to real.

“In a hurry?” Wanda asks with a smile. 

“Just slightly,” he says. “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss our date.”

He’s not sure if the words are quite right - he’s reasonably sure there’s implicit meanings he’s missing, but its not untrue. He would not miss this for the world, and their meeting fits many definitions of date. Wanda’s smile widens and grows in warmth and it eases any worries he has that his words were the right ones.

There’s already a drink waiting for him on the table - hot chocolate, with cream and marshmallows. 

“Try it,” Wanda says. “If you don’t like it we can get something else.”

He lifts the cup and takes a sip and sighs. It tastes like liquid happiness.

 

* * *

 

_ Vision, are you not letting me leave? _

_ It is a question of safety. _

 

* * *

 

The next they meet in the cafe again. He thinks: maybe Wanda does not trust him entirely just yet. He cannot blame her for that. He tried to keep her in the base, disregarded her choice. That she should want space to see for herself if she should trust him is logical, and he will not try to crowd around her and limit her as before. Better to let her choose and decide, to see that he is sorry, that he will not do so again.

Their drinks are the same, this time. Spiced tea, something Wanda says is very like what her mother made. Her eyes were damp as she said it; Vision remembers her grief at Pietro’s death, how it ate up her energy and had her lost to screaming nightmares until the pain began to ease. He wonders if Pietro’s death will ever be something to her as her mother’s death is, where it causes only the slightest of tears, and he doubts it.

“What is it like?” Wanda asks. “Back at base.”

Vision drinks his tea and thinks. It's nice, sweeter and warmer than the breakfast tea, laced with cinnamon and honey and hibiscus, the measure of milk in it making it almost creamy, cooling it from scalding so that when he swallows it it's like a hug from the inside out.

“It is... strange,” he says. “Back at the base. Without everyone.”

 

* * *

 

The lemurs at the zoo seem to love him as much as he loves them. One clambers onto his shoulder, he can feel them pulling at his coat. Part of his memory is pulling up information on them - their senses, their abilities, and he thinks that perhaps they know he is not quite human, not really, and so any wariness they have of human form is lost with the lack of a human scent. He cannot help his smile at their boldness, something about their fearlessness makes him think of Wanda, of how she does not fear him and he does not fear her, even when all the world fears what they could do.

Wanda beside him is smiling too, her eyes are on him even as her hands offer feed to the lemurs only to be rebuffed. He thinks that maybe she does not care quite so much about the lemurs as she does about how much he cares about the lemurs.

“You like them,” she says, and she is smiling.

“I’ve seen pictures,” he says. “But in person-”

He does not have the words. Their eyes are brighter than any pictures, their hands more nimble. They are bold and unafraid, meet his eyes, and take food from his hands and they do not flinch as half the team did when he first came to be. Like Wanda, they can see his inhumanity and do not care because to them it does not matter so much as that he is there and what he offers. 

“It must be strange,” Wanda says. “To know things as you do.”

“Sometimes,” he agrees. “But I prefer to think of the wonder. I can know it all, if I want to-” and his mind is already reaching for more information, not just about the ring-tail on his shoulder but about the others at this zoo, and it takes him a moment to pause that process, so he can simply revel in what  _ is _ and not in what he has yet to learn “-but… I don’t. I can experience it for the first time, but I have the awareness to understand it. Like being a child, as an adult.”

Wanda looks thoughtful, as she offers another handful of feed to the lemurs. “It must make emotions harder, though,” she says. “To experience them, but only have descriptions to go on.”

“Yes,” he says, and he is half-surprised that she understands. He should not be, really; she is the telepath, after all, but she knows and she understands, and she encapsulates all his complex thoughts on it into a single sentence, without the judgement he thinks that half the team might have tacked on without meaning to. “A lot of descriptions, I think… people write what they think something feels like, and describe it to make it seem more than it is, and so when I feel I can never be sure that it is what I think. Wonder alone took me a month to understand.”

He feels her hand slipping her handful of feed into his pocket, and then the hands of the lemurs reaching in in her wake. The sensation of the created-cloth against his leg, moved by the pressure of Wanda’s hands and then the lemurs is odd, almost… ticklish, he thinks, like the gentle touch of the lemurs hands on his each time they take some feed.

“I could help, if you would like,” Wanda offers. “I can-” she pauses, hesitant. “You know what I can do. I could tell you when I recognise an emotion. Tell you what it is.”

There is… There is some singing warmth in his chest, like music, or birdsong or breath or flight, something that lifts and rises and illuminates like fire and soft warmth and light and he turns to Wanda without words to explain. “Help me now?” he asks.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s hands are gentle when she touches him. It's not fear, of that he’s certain. If Wanda feared him, she would stop him, as she did when he tried to stop her leaving. If she feared him, he would not be allowed so close to her. Her hands are gentle, he thinks, because she wishes to be gentle, because she does not want to do harm, for all that she has. 

Her hands balance a small distance from his skin when she sends small soft pieces of scarlet to his mind. She never does harm, and so the stone never sees fit to warn him, but she is careful instead to show him what she does. Show him how the scarlet wraps around only what he is trying to show her, the thoughts he has tagged with her name and her face, the emotions he does not yet understand. 

Her hands balance a small distance from his skin, and then take his hands in hers as she explains what she understood, what she thinks the emotion may be, and lets him think and wonder and check her assessment with what he felt and any descriptions he can find that he does not think are so overblown or so underdescribed as to be useless.

They walk close now, when they go from cafe to cinema, to park, to shops. Close enough they can reach for one another’s hands if he wishes to know an emotion, close enough Wanda can tug him to one side if she wishes to explain something to him. Wanda still has not invited him back to where she stays, and he has not asked and has not tried to find it. He thinks:  _ she will show me when she trusts me, if she trusts me, _ and lets the odd glimmer that accompanies the thought be sufficient a thing to cling to in the meantime. 

He thinks the glimmer is hope.

 

* * *

 

Wanda is… careful. Not just about her safety, it seems, but also making sure Vision understands. He thought he understood a great deal; spending time with Wanda he realises he only understands so much. 

Apologies, for example, are more complicated than he thought - merely wishing to make amends is not sufficient apparently, and nor is saying as much. One must say so and then do so, and he hopes what he has said and offered to Wanda fills that. Her apology to him he considers unnecessary - he provoked her, after all, and so it is he who must apologise, but Wanda insists on making a proper apology of it and continuing to help him with emotions as recompense and he finds himself asking her more for emotions, letting her push them into his head from hers, or use scarlet to read them from his. 

It is… pleasant, he thinks, to know that she knows his mind, and he knows some aspect of hers, and that they do not fear this. That, indeed, they welcome it, if Wanda’s fond smile is anything to go by, if the warmth that fills him every time they share emotions between them is at all reliable. 

Affection becomes easy, and he almost doesn’t notice the little habits he’s begun. Indeed, he isn’t sure  _ when _ they began.

 

* * *

 

_ They're doomed. _

_ Yes. But a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts. It's a privilege to be among them. _

 

* * *

 

There is a graveyard. There are many graves and many markers. Crosses, yes, but other tombs too, new and old. This is not just a graveyard of one faith but of many and when Vision finds Wanda her fingers are tracing words in Hebrew. He does not ask.

“Many dislike the dead,” Wanda says. “They scare them.” Her fingers are still gentle on the stone, before she pulls a pebble from her pocket and sets it by the stone. “One of my mother’s people,” she says, rising. “I recognised the name.”

They walk through the graveyard. Vision tucks his hands into his pockets. It feels… odd to leave them dangling at his sides, and while he should like to take Wanda’s hands in his, feel the warmth of her skin and know she is real and alive and well, her hands are tucked into her pockets and so he does the same. 

“You are not scared of the dead,” he says. “But others are?”

Wanda smiles slightly but there is something… sad, and brittle at the edges. “Perhaps most do not know as many who are dead as I do,” she says. “But to others…” she shrugs. “They did not spend two days in rubble above the bodies of their parents. They did not see bodies in the streets as the bombs went off. Death is distant to them, and scary. To see the dead up close, to visit the graves for anything other than a funeral or someone they knew. It confuses them, scares them. To remember that they too are mortal.”

Mortal, Vision thinks. It means: will one day die. It means: finite. It means: it will not last.

He remembers what he told Ultron as they come to a halt beneath a yew tree. _ But a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts. _

“After all you have seen,” Vision says. “It does not scare you? Death?”

“The dead don’t phase me,” Wanda says. “Not at all.”

“No?”

“No. The living do.”

This makes sense, Vision thinks. The living have tried to hurt her over and over but the dead… the dead include her brother and her parents, people whom she loves still even though they are gone and he can see why she would be unafraid of death if it might reconnect her with those she’s lost.

 

* * *

 

“So you wanted to see-”

He half turns to her as they make their way through the morass of people. “They have an exhibit,” he says. “On Prometheus in art. The Ancient Greeks believed that he made humankind from clay.”

They keep moving through the gathered people, one of her hands warm in his, his other arm extended vaguely ahead to protect them from the ever-moving buffets of the crowd.

“Your great-many-times creator,” Wanda says. He feels her hand squeeze his, sees her fond smile “Vizh.”

It always makes him warm when she calls him that - a nickname, a  _ human _ thing - and he can’t help his smile back to her as he finds the end of the queue. “I like it when you call me that,” he says instead, to give himself time to find the words to explain why. “Vizh.”

The queue is long and the gates not yet open. He settles into stillness - something much easier for him than for Wanda - and feels as she leans her head against his shoulder to take some of the weight off her feet. Her hand is still in his and he can feel her warmth beside him as he thinks.  _ I like it when you call me that, _ he thinks.  _ I don’t know why, not completely. It makes me feel… warm and alive and  _ real _ and as though I matter as more than just an Avenger or the bearer of the mind stone. It makes me feel- _

“It makes me feel human,” he says.

 

* * *

 

“You are human,” Wanda says on the way back. They’re tucked at the back of the bus, her head leaning against his shoulder again, while he leans against the window. “You do know that right?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not. I don’t need to sleep or eat. I don’t even need to breathe, but it feels right to and it means I can talk so I do. I’m something else, Wanda, you know that.”

He feels her tense against his side, sees the flicker of scarlet in her palm from the corner of his eye.

“I’m not human then,” she says softly. “I’m an experiment. You’re an experiment at humanity. And you are human. You have cells, Helen started with a sample to bond the vibranium to, for the Cradle to build on.”

“I-” then his brain catches up. “What?”

Wanda’s frowning now, just as he is. “You never asked her?”

_ Asked-  _ He doesn’t even know how he could. Helen Cho  _ made _ him and there’s something deeply intimate about that, he knows, but she also made him under Ultron’s guidance and while he thinks she shook off the trauma of having been mind-controlled better than some, he could not just…  _ ask _ about his creation, not any more than he could ask Tony about JARVIS, or would ask Bruce how they’d balanced his body being completed to the neural download. To ask would…

“Doctor Cho is… she  _ made  _ me. Along with Tony and Dr Banner. To ask them how I was made would be as though… It would be like...”   
  
Wanda stifles a laugh and squeezes his hand. “Like asking your parents for the birds and bees talk?”   
  
_ “Yes,” _ he says emphatically. “I couldn’t ask them that Wanda, I  _ couldn’t.” _   
  
Her head is warm against his shoulder and her laugh is warm and fond enough that all the bite is taken out of her teasing next words. “All your curiosity,” she says. “Bested by embarrassment.”

 

* * *

 

It is darker than ever when they get off the bus. Shops closed, blinds drawn on most windows. The only thing lighting the street is a few streetlamps and the moon, far above. 

“Is this goodbye again?” he asks, their fingers still interlinked.

Wanda seems considering, her thumb brushing over his fingers absently. 

“Where would you go,” she asks. “If I said I would be glad to see you tomorrow, but not let you into my home?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t really know, beyond, “Find somewhere safe to stay, and wait for you to call me.”

“You wouldn’t go home?” she asks. “Back to base?”

He considers that. “I… do not think that the base  _ is _ home, really. Not anymore. And I would rather be here, so I could join you as soon as you asked me to.” He does not really know how to say that  _ she _ is home to him, now. That he does not feel quite so right as when he is in her presence, or when she smiles at him as she is right now.

Her hand is warm in his, and tugs gently. “Come home with me,” she says, and he follows without question.

 

* * *

 

Her home is… its very her. It’s a small flat, not terribly large. The main room is a living room, and dining room and kitchen all at once, almost like the common area at the base but smaller and littered with small things that mark it as hers - a stray bangle on a countertop, a pot of nail varnish on the arm of the sofa. She points to two doors. 

“Bathroom, bedroom,” she says. “Do you need either?”

He shakes his head. “My body is-”

“TMI, Vizh,” she says, but her smile is warm and gentle and she tugs him towards the sofa, moves the nail varnish to a table and curls into his side in a way that reminds him of the Battle of Novi Grad, of how easily she had moved with her brother. “Tell me about the base,” she says softly. “And Clint - he went back, didn’t he? Do you know if he is doing well?”

He talks of the base, of Rhodes getting his legs back, of Tony buried in his lab back at the tower, of how empty it is. He talks of what he knows of Clint, and as he feels her breathing even out he tapers off, falls to silence. Wanda shifts slightly against his side, but makes no noise of chiding, asking him to keep talking.

Instead, she curls closer, and Vision sees that she is fast asleep.

 

* * *

 

He stays three more days with her, though none quite so easily comfortable as that first night. Though they chat long evenings away Wanda sleeps in her own bed after that - barring the last night where she falls asleep on the sofa beside him again, but instead he slips into her room, finds her duvet and tucks it around her shoulders lest she get cold.

The day he has to head back their fingers remain tangled until he has no choice but to get on the train. He can feel her warmth even when their hands part, and he says the only thing he can say, “I wish I could stay longer,” because it is so very true, and from Wanda’s expression she feels likewise.

“Come back soon,” she says, and pulls him into an embrace.

Its… odd, the feeling of her arms around him, her head butting against his chin enough that he has to lift his head and turn slightly to one side, but it is warm too and reminds him of the nights spent on the sofa, Wanda sleeping and peaceful against his side. “I will,” he promises. “But… I wish I could stay longer.”

Wanda’s smile is warm and slightly damp, and she waves goodbye before the train pulls away.

 

* * *

 

The base when he returns is…

It is as Wanda said, empty. Of people and of warmth, with so many he cares for gone. Rhodes is off in town when he gets back and Tony is, as ever,  _ away. _ He considers finding Helen and asking after what Wanda told him, but it still feels… wrong to ask, just as it would be to ask Tony or Bruce. He cannot ask about his creation, he thinks, that is too much, even if he can  _ think _ about it with abandon, and think of Ultron and think of the stories of who created the humans who created Ultron who created him.

That is easy. But his own creation is hard.

So instead he does what he has never thought to do before, and goes to ask about his present - about himself.

The psychiatrist’s office makes him think of Wanda, even if the psychiatrist is different now. Just knowing that she once came here, when her brother’s death was still raw makes it far easier to sit in the chair and ask, “Excuse me, but I was wondering - how old  _ am I _ given parts of me are as old as the universe itself?”

 

* * *

 

Wanda wonders this too, he finds out when he next visits. He’d find it odd but for the fact that more and more he and Wanda prove to think oddly alike. Not always the same, no, but the same considerations strike them - the wellbeing of others, of one another, of making sure they are understood and do not fall to confusion or misunderstanding once more.

Neither of them like to make mistakes, Vision knows, and will do much to make sure they do not make the same ones again. When Wanda wonders it aloud he answers, the reply rolling off his tongue without a thought. Wanda blinks at him.

“I was curious,” he says with a shrug. “I asked the psychiatrist at the base for an estimation. It explains some things, I think. It must be hard to accept something as human when everything about it doesn’t seem to be so.”

“You are human,” Wanda says, and it's not an argument, not disagreement with what he has said. “You’re more human than most people, at least. And you’re as human as me.”

His thumb grazes over the back of her hand without thinking, warmth and affection bubbling up with his smile. “I know,” he says. “But not everyone sees things as we do.”

 

* * *

 

_ I became distracted. _

_ I didn't think that was possible. _

_ Neither did I. _

 

* * *

Base is increasingly … boring. He thinks that is the most fitting description of the lingering emptiness that draws interest out of even the most interesting things.

He goes and checks on things when Rhodey or Tony ask, he is there whenever either of the two Rosses decide to call and check they’re abiding by the rules, but more and more he wishes he wasn’t. He’d rather be with Wanda, with all the warmth she brings out, with all the chances to get a better grasp of emotions, with all the new things to try, than stuck in an empty base that barely deserves the prefix “Avengers” it is so empty of them.

The more his mind turns to Wanda, the more his mind drifts. He is distracted, but he finds he doesn’t mind it. He knows what it is now, to be distracted, so he can keep some focus assigned to other things, other people, making sure outcomes are considered before he acts. It's easy to keep some small portion of his mind focussed on day-to-day things, practicing in the training room - even if, more often than not, there is no one to keep him company - and another part rereading the messages that Wanda sends him, or looking up things to do the next time he visits. 

He’s distracted, but he finds he is happy to be distracted.

The things he searches for varies. Museums, yes, but also films Wanda might enjoy, restaurants she might appreciate, street fairs and open days for private collections.

Which is how, one afternoon - late evening for Wanda - he ends up flying right through a window and sending a text from his mind to her phone.

_ May I visit tomorrow? Y/n? I have a surprise. _

The reply takes only moments.

_ Y! What is surprise? _

He can’t help the smile as he thinks out the reply.

_ It's a surprise. _

 

* * *

 

“Wanda,” he says when he sees her face, and he’s full of such gladness he feels as though he’s almost bursting at the seams. He takes her hands in his, presses kisses to her knuckles. “Come with me. I’ve something to show you.”

She’s smiling as he pulls her outside and flags a taxi, smiling as he gives directions, smiling as they drive. She scolds him for risking their being found, but he has thought ahead at least a little, with the guise of a Stark watch on his wrist and he can hardly contain himself as he leads her towards the street corner.

“My treat,” he says, and watches Wanda’s face go from amused fondness to something so beautiful he can hardly bring himself to breathe. She’s looking around, and then the smells catch her and her eyes go half-closed, head tilting back and his hand finds hers and gently squeezes. “Whatever you want,” he says. “We can get spices if you want, or just tea or-”

“Vision,” she says and her smile is as wide as he’s ever seen it. “Vizh. What am I feeling right now?”

The scarlet is an extra burst of warmth against his palm, and for a moment he can’t feel whatever she’s sent to him because its almost identical to his own until its strength builds until it's almost overwhelming, some glowing glorious thing that takes his breath away as much as Wanda’s smile.

“Happiness,” he whispers. “Joy.”

She nods and she’s still smiling and if he’d known that the words  _ Eastern European Food Market _ would have lead to this, he thinks he would have searched out such things far far sooner. Her arm wraps around his waist and her head leans into his shoulder and for a long moment she just stands there, breathing it all in.   
  
_ “Thank you,” _ she says.

 

* * *

 

They spend more scattered days together. They take it in turns to find things to do- he tends to find museums and street fairs, films and places to go elsewhere, while Wanda introduces him to cholent and moussaka, to proper paprikash and more teas than he could have believed existed, to Sokovian cartoons, and what it is like to have to wake someone from a nightmare.

He knows she does not intend the last, but he does not mind it. He thinks, as well, that he does not see the ends of all of her nightmares, for there are days she wakes looking haunted when he did not wake her, when he moves gently around her to make tea, settling her on the sofa while she begins to come back to herself and out of the well of emotions a nightmare dug up.

Sometimes, on those mornings, she offers her palm to him, sings an emotion from her hand to his head and asks him to identify it.

He learns to sit with her, to let her lean against his side, to drink the tea and wince at the welcome heat in a way he never does. He learns to read the emotions she sends him, and to remember the ones she identified for him, and to see these emotions before they appear, to recognise what will cause happiness or sorrow, joy or grief. He learns what it is to return home laughing - for it is  _ home _ to him now, Wanda’s flat, just as Wanda is - breathing warmth onto his fingers and marveling at the sensation even if he does not need to.

He learns to… to  _ be _ , in a way he could not at the base.

 

* * *

 

_ I'm not Ultron. I'm not JARVIS. I am...I am. _

 

* * *

 

“Ultron,” he says one day. “You tore his core out.”

Wanda blinks, startled. “That. You saw that?”

“The aftermath,” he says, and he cannot forget it, the two slumped bodies, the core by Wanda’s hand, the dripping oil like blood upon it. The aftermath, of grief and rage and impossible power. “The only person who could have done it was you.”

Wanda’s gaze goes distant, not entirely on the present anymore. “He killed Pietro,” she says, and he knows how hard it is for her to speak of her brother, can see the tears as they bead in her eyes. “I felt it. It was-”

His hand finds hers, his thumb strokes over the back of her hand. Wanda falls to silence and simply watches, blinking away unshed tears. 

“You don’t like those who betray you,” he says. “Or who hurt you.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” she says, and he can hear the lead in her throat as he felt it in his, those months ago. His thumb grazes over the back of her hand again, a soothing motion, one he’s used time and time again after her lessening nightmares.

“That is true,” he says. “But I do not think there are many who deal with them as decisively as you do.”

 

* * *

 

They go swimming. It's… an odd experience. Then again, Vision thinks, many things are odd to him, because his sense of normal is skewed in its own way. Because he has arrived at his almost-adulthood without any childhood to back it.

It's a small lake or perhaps a large pond. Vision isn’t entirely sure and he finds he doesn’t mind not knowing. Instead, he floats on his back, and tries to imagine how his human guise might tan - or perhaps burn - in the sun. Wanda swims smoothly beside him, hesitant at first before gaining confidence.

“Mama took us down to the valley once,” she says. “To visit her cousins. There was a pool like this, and she taught us both to swim.” She smiles, treads water by him, flicks water at his face so he half-flinches and has to blink the drops away. “Pietro got it first. He always did, when he paid attention.”

They stay there, floating on the water or swimming into it until Wanda is pruny and Vision looks at her fingers to try to replicate the appearance.

“Do not worry,” she says, and lifts the hand he’s holding to stroke her thumb over his lips. The texture is odd, different to normal, but he likes it nonetheless. “There is the walk back. And we can always say that you did not join me, swimming.”

“I didn’t,” he points out. “I floated. It is… interesting, to float and not have it be because of my powers.”

Wanda’s smile is wide and warm and fond and he cannot help but respond in kind. The emotions rising in his chest and the smile spreading across his face do so on their own, and he wouldn’t stop it for anything.

 

* * *

 

She dyes her hair red. Or… not red, but not orange, not golden and not copper. It's a gingery colour, almost natural but for its brightness, but for how her hair is still dark at the roots, but for how he knows her hair to be dark brown, if not as dark as her brother’s was under its odd pale sunbleach.

“You like it?” she asks, and he keeps his fingers half tangled in the long strands, caught up in how the light shimmers across the length.

“It’s new,” he says. “Different.”

“I wanted something different,” Wanda says, as he continues to examine her hair. “And. Father’s hair was red, before he died.”   
  
He holds a curl of her hair between his fingers, feels the texture. Against human skin her hair looks almost ordinary and he wonders just a moment, lets his guise slip just a moment, and the orange-red of her hair flashes bright against the dark magenta of his skin. He thinks of how her eyes glow, how framed with dark hair she looked like a witch, but with this she may look a demon. He smiles.

“I like it,” he says, looking at her properly. “It suits you.” He strokes her hair between his fingers absently. “And you will look much scarier with eyes that glow darker than your hair.”

She elbows him for that, but doesn’t move away. Even when his hands stop drifting to her hair, she stays tucked into his side, smiling and laughing, as they walk.

 

* * *

 

They go to museums - to the Hunterians, both in Glasgow and London, to those of natural history, to those of Egyptology and art and rural life. They go to street fairs and to markets, and find new foods to try, or small objects of interest. They go to the cinema and watch film after film. Some films Wanda tucks into his side, even with the chair-arm between them, other films he ends up hiding behind his hand in shock or surprise. They always leave arms interlinked, bright and laughing as they discuss what they saw or the ideas they spawn.

“Why do you eat?” Wanda asks when they are out at dinner one evening. It's a Sokovian restaurant, one established for many years even before the destruction of Novi Grad, and Vision was glad to find it so near to Wanda’s home, if only so she has some part of her history near her still. She sits across the table from him, a glass of the sharp spirits the waiter had poured in her fingers, and watches.

“Because I can,” he says. “Or… Not entirely. I do not need to eat and I should not waste food. But it is… pleasant, to share this with you, or with the team, when we were all at the base. It… it's like when you call me Vizh.”   
  
Wanda understands in a moment. “It makes you feel human.” Her hand stretches to his, clinks her glass against his and downs the raki. After a moment he follows suit. “Dessert?” she asks.

He glances at the menu - in truth he has already memorised it, already translated it, already considered all the options, but he does not think he wants to choose, not today, not with Wanda here, who knows the options far better than he ever could. “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he admits. “Pick for me?”

 

* * *

 

He stays at hers more often than not. He thinks: they will miss me at the base, but they never do. He thinks: they will try to find me, but while Tony asks him to keep a transponder signal on him he never chases him up when he doesn’t. 

He thinks: does it matter? And finds he does not think it does. He is much more happy to stay with Wanda than he is to stay back at base, much more happy to walk down streets with his hand in hers, to go where she leads, to watch her smile.

It is… he feels  _ human _ , human in a way he did not think was possible for him and it does something to him, gives him a happiness he did not expect. To see Wanda smile at him, to make her laugh, to share museums and street fairs and films with her, to talk and share meals, to try the drinks she pushes to him, to know she trusts him every time she invites him back to her flat or falls asleep against his side. She never startles when he lifts her and settles her in her bed, never startles when he settles her on the sofa long enough to fetch her duvet, she never flinches when he gently rolls her under her covers and tucks them around her shoulders.

She  _ trusts. _ After all she has been through, after he broke her trust, Vision thinks he has altogether too good a grasp of just what it means that she trusts him all the same. That she offers this to him.

So he stays in the mainroom, settles into standby, and keeps watch through the night to ensure she comes to no harm due to him.

 

* * *

 

There is a haunted look in Wanda’s eyes when she turns to him one evening and asks, “Stay with me?”

They’re sat on her bed, Wanda is half tucked in already but their conversation ended up lingering on, and so Vision had joined her when she had called and sat at the edge of her bed. Over the conversation they drew closer, and now their hands lay on the folded back covers, their fingers interlinked.

“Are you sure?” he asks. 

“You …,” she starts, and breaks off. “Remember back at base. My first few days? And some nights here-”

Realisation dawns. “The nightmares,” he says. “Is it easier, if someone is there?”

“Someone to wake to,” she says. “It is. It reminds me I’m not alone.”

He’s not sure of the emotions rolling through him, or he is, but not exactly what they mean. He knows sorrow and upset and warmth and care, but not in this mixture, not in this situation. He takes her hand in his, lifts it to his forehead. “What am I feeling?” he asks.

The scarlet sings. Wanda chokes a small little laugh. “Empathy,” she says. “You feel bad because I do.”

It all coalesces into crystal. He holds her hand in his, smoothes his thumb over the back of her hand and smiles. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I’ll stay.”

Wanda moves to settle herself in, pulls the tucked back covers up, and he moves around the bed, shifts day clothes to something resembling pyjamas - he can make more realistic ones later, test them out in the day rather than now, when Wanda would sleep - and folds back the covers on what he supposes is, for tonight, his side of the bed. He folds the covers back over himself, balances himself on the mattress and the pillows. It's… odd. He’s not slept in a bed before, only sat on one, and it feels almost as it did when he was swimming; odd to seem to float without phasing, but no less pleasant for it.

He half reaches for her, and her hand meets his halfway. 

“Thank you,” she says, eyes bright in the dark room, and settles down to sleep.

 

* * *

 

_ I can read him. He is dreaming. _

 

* * *

 

Vision lies still so as not to disturb Wanda. Her hand is warm in his and as he slows his breathing to match to hers she shifts closer, her forehead leaning against his arm. He keeps his breathing matched to hers as she falls asleep, and wonders if he at all  _ can _ sleep, rather than the halfway state he tends to fall to. He knows he does not need to sleep, but then he does not need to eat or breathe or speak either and yet chooses to do so.

He looks up the brain patterns relating to sleep and soothes his mind to those patterns.

Usually come night, when Wanda seeks her bed, he simply… is. He goes into his particular halfway state, standby mode or hibernation, ready in case he is needed - to wake her from nightmares, usually, or in case anyone has recognised her and seeks to do them harm - and while he is so he… stops.

This is very different, he thinks as he sinks towards unconsciousness. Wanda has shifted closer so he lifts his arm carefully through her and extends it gently around her shoulders. In her sleep she sighs and moves her head to his collarbones. Under her eyelids scarlet flickers.

_ To sleep, perchance to dream. _

Vision doesn’t know if he can dream, but he’d like to try.

 

* * *

 

He wakes to Wanda’s lips on his cheek, soft and warm. When he checks his internal timekeeping he finds he is missing some several hours; when he tries to search out memories he finds strange fleeting fragments that hide from his conscious mind in a way he does not quite understand. Perhaps, he thinks, he did dream after all.

Wanda’s eyes are soft and watchful as they ever are. There is no judgement to her gaze, no expectation and he lifts his head to look at her more clearly.

“No nightmares?” he asks.

“None,” Wanda says. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

He returns to base still almost singing with the warmth he feels. He does not know why it is so strong now, so much stronger than every time before when he has shared some affection with Wanda, when she has shown how much she trusts him. But now, for some reason, even when he has to leave her the warmth does not dull, the elation does not ease. If anything it is stronger, and he can imagine her response to his text replies with a clarity he would not have attempted before.

Instead he feels bright, he feels warm, he feels  _ alive _ and he feels  _ human _ and he knows there is a risk to this, to feeling human to acting it - if he does so for too long, he fears, maybe he will forget that he is  _ not _ human, and he must not forget that, that he is some other thing entirely. He knows there is a risk to this, to being human, to letting himself love Wanda as he does, to letting himself be distracted but…

Is that not why he was made? Why Ultron made him? For all Ultron claimed to hate humans he loved them too, in his twisted way, and he sought to be like them and to replicate them - all their hate as well as their love, their destructiveness and their creativity. He could have escaped human form and yet he chose not to, he chose to become more so.

He chose to make him.

He could have been something else, some other creature, something monstrous and inhuman, had Ultron truly hated humanity so, but he did not, and JARVIS could not and so Vision is as he is, in a human form with a human heart and something that would wish to be a human mind.

Vision cannot resent what he is, any more than he can resent Wanda for putting him through the floor for his betrayal. He cannot wish his humanity to cease any more than he could wish it for his life to, or for Wanda’s humanity - their humanity, or what there is of it, is what anchors them to the world. Is what lets them care. Is what keeps them human. 

He cannot resent it, cannot wish to give it up. He wishes to be human, and that means love and that means distraction, that means  _ life _ and that in turn means death.

He cannot resent it, or wish it otherwise, any more than he could Ultron, or Wanda, or his own existence. The opposite in fact - he loves it, just as he loves Ultron even though Ultron is gone, and loves Wanda, for all her power and kindness, and loves to live, if only because it lets him spend time with one he loves.

 

* * *

 

_ You're saying they'll come for me. _

_ We would protect you. _

 

* * *

 

He does not know what it is when suddenly he finds he cannot see and something is  _ wrong _ , is… it is  _ pain _ and he did not think he could feel pain, not truly, not that particular physical ache of something wrong with his body.

He is vibranium. The only person who can hurt him is Wanda, and she has no wish to.

“Vizh,” she says. “Vizh?” Her hands take his, her thumbs pressed to his palms and as soon as the pain came it is gone.

“Headache,” he says. “It’s just a headache.”

Wanda frowns, and he can feel the scarlet humming in her palms. “Vizh,” she says. “When have you ever had a headache? Any kind of ache or pain at all?”

He has no answer to that. Or, he does, and the answer is  _ never. _ He can see the lines of worry in her face, though, the worry that she will lose yet another person dear to her, and he can see, now, so easily, why her brother protected her so fiercely when she looks like this when worried for another. 

“I miss you,” he says. “When I leave.” And it aches, it aches in a way he does not entirely know how to explain, as though his heart has paused beating and simply clenched still in his chest for a long moment. Wanda’s eyes do not look away, and he sighs. “But I do not think that is the pain you mean.”

Wanda sighs, her hand rises and smooths over his cheek. Impulsively, he kisses her palm.

“Headaches aren’t as fleeting as this either,” she points out. “Is it the stone?”

That… is a good question. And not one he wishes to dwell on. “Check?” he says all the same, bowing his head towards her hands. He half-laughs. “What am I feeling?”

The scarlet sings, her palm balances a distance from his brow and he can feel the stone warm and light so close to powers it itself awoke. Then her hand drops and Wanda shakes her head. “I just feel you,” she says. “Confusion and uncertainty, and hope and-”

He presses his forehead gently to hers to cut her off. “Maybe it's nothing.”  _ Maybe. _ He knows it likely isn’t and Wanda’s weak smile tells much the same story of doubt and worry.

“Maybe,” she says. “Hopefully.”

He takes her hand in his, lifts her fingers to his mouth and presses a kiss to them. “Whatever it is,” he says. “I think that if anyone can weather that storm, it is you.”

He can see in her face the words she does not yet respond with.

_ It is not worth it to weather it if I emerge alone. _

 

* * *

 

The headaches happen again. Or… Wanda insists that they are not headaches, spins memories into his mind to show him her migraines and the splitting headaches that cramped her skull when she was still new to her powers and the world around her mind was blinding. It is true, the startles of pain he receives are not the same long low aches as hers, nor the blinding pain that means she must curl in darkness until the pain lets her go free, but he has no other word for what they are except perhaps  _ warnings. _

And he thinks that anything that the mind stone might try to warn him of is more than he would wish to see Wanda face.

They curl in the cafe now, not sitting in separate seats. Instead they find a sofa and curl into one another’s sides. Wanda rests her head on his collarbone, Vision rests his head against hers and watches the world around them. He thinks, often, Wanda does the same, for they both lose track of who’s cup is who’s. He doesn’t think he minds, really. He drinks less than Wanda, so if she steals his cup then she gets more than she might otherwise, and he does not mind drinking from her cup, because it is hers and he is glad enough that she is willing to share so much with him.

The warmth of the tea melts away any stiff stress in his jaw, lets him open his mouth to speak. Lets him focus more on Wanda, on keeping her from worry. He is more than just his parts, he knows - whatever the mind stone is warning him of, there is a chance he can be preserved against it. Wanda, on the other hand, has only one form and one mind and one way to exist, and he would see her kept from worry and kept from harm. His worry over the stone and whatever secrets it is trying to warn him of is one thing, his worry over Wanda is something else.

But the stone and its warnings bring other worries, worries he does not quite know how to say just as, once, he did not know how to express himself to Wanda.

He is not human. The stone reminds him of this. He can wear a human face and have human mannerisms. He can share a bed with Wanda, and curl an arm around her when she has nightmares. He can act human as much as he likes, he can have cells and neurons as well as vibranium and code, but in the end he is not human.

It is a shame, he thinks. He likes being human. He likes spending time with Wanda like this, as just another person, and not… whatever he is, if there are truly words for what he is.

But he isn’t human. He’s something else, and the stone reminds him of that.

He pretends anyway. He’s  _ good _ at it now, acting human, and sometimes he forgets where the act ends and he himself begins. Sometimes he lets himself be human for Wanda, to offer advice and comfort, other times he does it because it is  _ easy _ , easy to lose himself in humanity, in the idea that there is no threat the stone wishes to warn him of, that he simply  _ is _ , with no great threat hovering over his head for the stone in his brow.

He leans his head against Wanda’s and lets himself become lost in humanity, even as he remembers more and more that he is anything but.

 

* * *

 

_ Maybe I am a monster. I don't think I'd know if I were one. _

 

* * *

 

Some evenings they watch the news. Some evenings they each curl up with a book, lean against one another and read, occasionally peering over each other’s shoulder when one of them laughs or cries. This evening, they are playing chess when Wanda says, “Sometimes you seem more human than most humans.”

He moves his queen’s castle before looking up. He cannot help but feel fond at her face. “You know that is completely ridiculous.”

“I said seem,” Wanda says. “And it’s in the eye of the beholder anyway.”

He half-smiles. “Like beauty?”

Wanda shrugs - a tiny motion, as much to push her hair back off her shoulder as it is to actually shrug. “Perception is personal, isn’t it? We can make sure people see us one way, but they’ll still interpret us based on whatever they believe.”

Some part of him wonders how much of that is based on experience. How much is a repeat of what he said back at the base before everything fell apart. How much is what she has seen in minds and read in books, and how much is a knowledge older than that, built into her bones from her childhood in Sokovia. 

“You’re the telepath,” he says, gesturing for her to take her move. “I trust your judgement.”

Wanda eyes him before she moves her piece - a bishop. Vision can already see six paths from her move to his win, but decides to ignore them, for now. It isn’t fair, after all, that he can plan like this - that he is this inhuman - when playing against someone who is inhuman in a wholly different way.

“You do seem more human,” she says. “You’re as human as I am-” and Vision cannot help the brief swell of warmth he feels at her repeated reassurance, even as he knows he is not human and will never be human and that to delude himself otherwise helps no one “-but mentally, I mean.” She pauses, rolls a taken pawn between her fingers absently. “You care more than most. You think more than most. But… you’re still human.”

Sometimes Vision wonders why she says it so much.  _ As human as I am. _ She has already claimed to be inhuman for the scarlet in her blood. Were she anyone else Vision would think she was agreeing that he was not human, but Vision knows how she clings to her humanity, how she has helped him find humanity, and almost sighs. His fingers find a piece at random, identify it and move it with only half a thought to take Wanda’s bishop. “Are you sure you’re not just seeing what you believe is there?”

There is a pause, and when he looks up Wanda is frowning at him.

“Vizh,” she says softly. “You’re the one who told me that you eat because it makes you feel human. Like when I call you Vizh - you said you liked that. What’s the matter?”

_ What’s the matter? _ Everything, he wants to say. Everything. That she lets him pretend to be human, that she helps him in it, that she reassures him time and time again, and lets him dream of being human when, “I am not human, Wanda,” he says, and scrubs a hand over his head and lets his human face fall away, the disguise fall away until he’s as bare of any hiding disguise as the day he came to be. “I can pretend, but-”

Wanda’s hand does not flinch as it takes his. “I wish you did not have to pretend,” she says, and her voice is soft but certain, and her gaze is honest. She lifts his hand to her lips, presses kisses to his fingers, his skin a magenta shadow by her pale face. “Vizh,” she says, almost pleading. “What’s the matter?”

_ Everything, _ he wants to say, but that isn’t the answer, it is only a fraction of the answer, and it is not an answer that will explain enough, that will be understood.

“What do you want from me?” he asks. “From this?”

What do you want?” she asks, and there is no hesitation there. “You were the one to find me.” She presses a kiss to his knuckles. “You found me, Vizh, not the other way around. In Novi Grad, when everything fell, when everyone left the base to fight, when I came here. You found me. What do you want?”

He almost says _anything._ _Anything you see fit to give me. Anything you will let me share with you. Anything that will bring me closer to human, I want to be human Wanda, to be real and alive and tangible, and_ ** _living_** _in a way I am not as… as I am._ He wants to be human, and he knows that he is not, and he wants to be allowed to simply live, and knows he cannot and he does not know how to reconcile these things into the simple peace of the time he spends with Wanda. He tugs her hand close, presses a kiss to the heel of her hand, smooths her fingers along his cheeks and cannot help but relax, cannot help how his mind falls to soft silence as her thumb traces along his cheekbone.

“To be human,” he says. “But I’m not. I can be made from as many human cells as I like but I’m not human, Wanda.”

“You’re as human as I am,” she says, and again it is without hesitation, with such certainty.  _ “Look _ at you,” she says. “The only thing you’re missing is ears, and you can still hear all the same, still have the shapes there even if you never got actual ones.”

“Wanda-”

Her hand pulls away from him, scarlet trailing in its wake, and his cheek feels cold for its absence. “How human am I, Vizh? Do you know any other humans who can read minds and throw a television across a room with half a thought? Any other humans who had a brother who could run faster than sound? Who tore through vibranium with nothing but her will?”

She is alive in the argument, alive with warmth and fire and certainty. There is not anger, but confusion, and drive to reassure. Emotion, all born from a base of care. Again, it feels as though his heart stills in his chest for a moment, to see her so bright before him.

“You’re different.”

“So are you,” she says with a sigh, sinking back into her seat. She knocks over her king with a fingertip.   
  
He catches the king with his own finger, sets it back upright from teetering. “You’re different,” he repeats. “You and your brother, you started human. I may have started with human cells but I never had a human life, a human form. I’ve always been,” he gestures, “this.”   
  
“My brother and I were orphaned,” Wanda says. “We lived on the streets; trust me, no one thinks you’re human when you sleep on street corners. We protested and believe me, no police treat you like you’re human when you’re little more than a shouting street rat to them. We signed up for experiments. Now we are literal lab rats. Then we came out of it and I could do this.” There is a flicker of scarlet, and the clatter of the king on the chessboard.

She is certain, so certain, and he thinks that no argument he might make will be without a counter. Maybe, he briefly thinks, she is watching his mind, ready to counter his every offering, but he knows she will not, that she respects his privacy, is aware of the mistake she has made, delving into minds unasked for. She would not, he knows, do that to him. He shakes his head to try to clear it - human, so human, and he can’t be that, isn’t that - and runs his hands over his scalp.

Wanda’s voice is soft and gentle, warm and reassuring. “You’re beautiful, Vizh. And you’re as human as I am.”

Her words wash over him, set something easing in his mind before the worries come back, unhindered by emotion, simple logic arguing because he is not human and not a creature of emotion for all that he can feel every last one. “I hate this,” he says. “I. Wanda. What am I feeling?”

Scarlet glows in her palms, a web of it between the edges of her palm, a needle like glass and as soft as silk, and she sings it into his mind and chokes back something that does not sound quite like a laugh when she sees. 

“Doubt,” she says. “Self-doubt and anxiety.” Her hand drops to his face, slides down from temple to cheek, settling softly along his jaw. “Vizh,” she says, and there is a soft smile on her face, a reassurance and a promise. “You don’t have to be human for me. If you want to be human, I’ll help you because it's what you want.”

He closes his eyes, tilts his head to her touch and as her words help him to reconcile logic and emotion, what he wants and what he is, he kisses her palm in thanks.

 

* * *

 

He worries still, after the discussion, but now that Wanda knows it she pokes and prods him into confronting it, teasing him out of it like thread from a snarl until he feels as though he is laid out and eviscerated before her, open to her every enquiry as she examines, and helps him fix his upset mind and set his worries back where they belong. 

Her hands are gentle as she does it though, soft and searching and pulling back when he finds he does not have the words. When he falls to silence she takes his hand in hers, lifts his fingers to press a kiss to them and helps him find some distraction. 

Without her to help his worries, though, base becomes even worse. It is so empty it almost eats at him, the lack of people creates a kind of clawing loneliness and if you’d asked him but scant months ago if he’d find the emptiness so clawing he’d have said no - if you’d asked him a few months ago to describe the emptiness of the base as eating or clawing at him he’d … not have laughed, no, but certainly found it odd. Now the turns of phrase feel all too apt with the worries eating at his mind, and the ache he feels for Wanda’s presence clawing at his ribs.

He refuses to let them eat and claw at him though - he is not some animal to be prey his emotions, and while he feels them and while he revels in the fact he can feel them, he is no servant to them. He lines his emotions up with his logic, thinks of Wanda and how she helps him soothe himself to some sense of order and distracts himself with abandon.

Distracting himself with thoughts of Wanda is one thing, but while she is not around, while the base is so empty it is more of an ache than he cares to feel, so he distracts himself with things he has learned from Wanda, from being allowed to live and to simply  _ be _ instead.

His room changes. He gets a bed, around the same size as Wanda’s, because some part of him hopes that one day she will be free to return to the base and on that day he’d like to offer her use of his bed as she’s so often given him use of hers. He finds covers in dark blue and forest green - the sky as it turns to dusk, the colours of pine needles - and covers his window sills with plants. One wall he simply covers with a corkboard and pins up postcards and posters, pictures and cards from places he’s seen with Wanda and places he’s seen on his own. Prometheus rests in pride of place, of course, but there’s a postcard of a dinosaur skeleton and pictures of lemurs, postcards of constellations, a poster of Hubble’s long-exposure starscape, and dangling from one pin a keyring Wanda gave him of Pinocchio. His shelves soon fill as well - a caddy of the spiced tea Wanda prefers, books and magazines, small baubles he liked and a teacup for the tea.

He can’t find it in himself to put anything red in his room, though. For all Wanda does not keep much that is red around any more it is still a colour that is hers, and he would rather any red in his room be placed by her hands.

He distracts himself, and he finds he can enjoy being distracted by more than just Wanda, and that it feels good, good to simply lie in his bed, tucked under covers, and listen to Wanda’s voice when she calls him late at night.

That it makes him feel human, but that he can trace back all the reasons he likes it to other things as well. Human, he thinks, and not, and all the parts between. Exactly as he is, and Wanda is.

 

* * *

 

_ Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites, and try to control what won't be. _

 

* * *

 

“It’s never going to frighten you, is it?” she asks. “What I can do.”

They’re curled in the cafe - its raining and they’d ducked in as the downpour had begun, and now they rest in the far corner, watching the almost empty room and cradling warm cups in their hands. Their free hands are touching - Wanda’s hand is on his cheek, and his hand on hers, smooth over her fingers so he can press a kiss to the palm of her hand.

“Without what you can do,” he says. “I wouldn’t exist. I love what you can do. How can I not?”

He presses another kiss to her palm, because her hand is still soft on his face, and he enjoys the presence of her warmth, and he enjoys her presence with him, and he loves what she can do as he loves her and he world around them, from the still-living lemurs at the zoo, to Ultron, dead and gone.

She sips her tea, leans her head on his shoulder and traces her hand away from his cheek for a moment, her thumb trailing a line over the dip of his lips. He kisses her thumb too, for good measure, and cannot help the warmth that rises at her laughing smile. 

“I do not think we can hurt each other,” he says, and he has thought this for a while, but thinks that if they are discussing what she can do and what she has done, he might as well say it. “Or, if we can, I don’t think we ever will. Harm, maybe, but hurt… we are of the same, in a way. Your powers from this-” and he lifts two fingers to tap his forehead, where the stone rests beneath his disguise “-and I exist as I am because of what you did before you joined the team.” He smiles at her, lets the warmth spill out, and continues. “Our fates are intertwined, perhaps. Whatever happens, maybe it is simply meant to be.”

Her smile is warm and fond, and her hand cups his jaw, her thumb traces along his cheek. “You should be a poet,” she says. “All of your ideas and ways of saying them.”

He almost laughs at that, the idea of something as inhuman as he is writing something as essentially human as poetry, but he leans into her touch, and considers it as seriously as he thinks she would have him, and says, “Maybe I will try.”

Maybe he will. Poetry is the food of love, after all.

 

* * *

 

He manages to hide the small bursts of pain the mind stone gives him until one day they are walking down the street, and he laughs at something Wanda says only to stumble, half-blind from pain.

“Vizh,” Wanda says, “Vizh. What’s the matter? What are you feeling?” And he wants to respond but he can’t, the pain is still there, his sight is still gone and his jaw hurts from how he clenches it so he doesn’t let out the noise of pain he knows he might otherwise.

When he can see again Wanda’s hands are warm on his face, her eyes are bright and concerned and they’re standing in a doorway, a small burst of scarlet turning eyes and minds away from them.

“Vizh?”

He touches the stone, but it feels no different to normal. 

“It was like before,” he says. “You remember?”

She looks worried as her thumb strokes a line along his cheek. He leans into the touch, soft and warm and a counterpoint to the pain that has vanished from his body as quickly as it arrived.

“See,” he asks her. “Check. What was I feeling?”

His eyes are half closed as he leans into the touch of her hand on his cheek, but he still feels the soft touch of her scarlet as she spins a thread into his mind, into the stone, and tries to find out.

“I don’t know,” she says, almost a whisper. “I just feel you.”

 

* * *

 

He misses her presence more. It's not quite an ache now, though, it simply  _ is, _ the knowledge that he would much rather be with her than back at base. He makes tea from the caddy and ignores Tony’s remarks that he does not need to eat so why is he bothering. The smell reminds him of Wanda, and eases the ache, and he drinks it and remembers what Wanda says, that it tastes almost like the tea her mother made, and lets himself feel happy that she trusts him enough to share such things with him.

She seems to miss him just as much, though, if the increase of her calls is any indication. Now most evenings, as he settles in with a book before retiring he receives the soft signal that means that Wanda is calling him. It is never a consideration that he might put off the call for the book. He sets his book down, changes day clothes to pyjamas and curls under the covers of his bed. Down the phone line he can hear the rustle of her own bed linens around her words and he wishes more and more that he did not have to return to the base so much.

“I miss you,” she whispers, and he wishes he could reach through the connection and stroke her cheek and tuck in beside her. He remembers how they wake, the nights she asks him to share her bed, with her curled into his side and his arm around her shoulders, and the soft dreamlike memories he has after sleeping, of fast and flying things, a freedom they both seek and may never have, but full of hope nonetheless. 

Different to the dreams - they are dreams, he supposes - he has at the base, of shadows and mazes and worrisome things.

“I miss you too,” he says, and imagines her hand in his as she sighs, and the call ends.

 

* * *

 

_ I'm still me, I think, but… that's not what everyone else sees. _

 

* * *

 

Warmth fills him when he sees her again. Their hands tangle without thinking, Wanda’s fingers twining through his with the same nimbleness that they use to call scarlet power to her palms. He likes it, that she is as easy with him as she is with her powers - as easy with his powers as he is with her.

He follows her to the cinema - there is a film she wants to see, and he finds he has every interest in it as well.

A story of love between someone human, but not seen so, and a creature which is something else entirely.

They watch the film half curled into each other. The cinema is dark and the screen almost empty - they have caught the film towards the tail end of its showing, and so Vision feels safe enough to phase through the seat a little to be nearer to Wanda and she leans into his side gladly. 

They watch, and rest, keep thoughts to share for afterwards.

 

* * *

 

Wanda begs him for a hint, smiling and teasing but he smiles, and leans to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth and instead gives the promise that she’ll enjoy it. 

She smiles, one fingertip lifts to touch the corner of her mouth he’d pressed his lips to and he lifts their joined hands to press a kiss to her knuckles as well for good measure.

“You picked the last two times,” he reminds her. “I think I’m allowed to make this a surprise.”

She does not deny this, merely looks at him with a bright-warm fondness that makes his heart seem to spill over with affection.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s eyes widen as they join the queue. There’s objects of witchcraft on the posters, cauldrons and brooms and big pointed hats, but there are alembics too, the birth of science, and further, still, there are reams of Arabic and Hebrew alongside patches of Latin.  _ Folklore, Magic and Alchemy, _ say the posters,  _ the birth of science. _

Something that combines several of their great interests into one thing.

“I thought you might like it,” he whispers as the queue starts moving, and he thinks, from Wanda’s expression, that if they had not had to keep walking she would have embraced him then.

 

* * *

 

Wanda is drawn to the section on witchcraft and the section on Jewish folklore. Vision cannot blame her. After so long cut off, one way or another, from her heritage, he thinks it must be nice to so simply run her fingers over the mezuzah at the arch, to show interest at not just the magic so many claim she can do but at some aspect of her history and herself. He watches her eyes dance over the alchemical scroll, link the display on Golems to the woodcut of a Homunculus curled in an alembic. 

“Alchemy helped to birth modern science,” he says softly. “Did you know? It comes from the Arabic, _al-kīmiyā’_ , and then the French. The word Chemistry has the same roots.”

Wanda half turns to him, smiles, takes his hand in hers, and continues to read the displays, moving onwards from the Golem, to the poppets and mandrakes, to the art of the alembics with new life in their bellies. Life born from nothing at all.

“Homunculi,” Wanda says.

Vision smiles. “I was thinking,” he says. “About witches and their familiars. A spirit come from nothing to signify a bond between their chosen path. And then Homunculi - a life come from nothing as the culmination of someone’s work.”

“They are similar,” Wanda agrees. “In a way.” 

They stay, hand in hand, reading the displays, swaying slightly this way and that, as new things catch their interest. Slowly, slowly they move through it all. Wanda pulls towards the old Hebrew texts, drawn to them like a moth to a flame, a needle to a magnet. When Vision looks close he can see her mouthing the syllables, as though the words are there in her mind already, as half-remembered things. Vision reads the entirety of the Latin on the great scroll, and then spends altogether too long at a display of an untranslatable manuscript, trying with intent focus to break the language. Wanda’s head rests softly on his shoulder, and it seems as though they both lose track of time until Wanda’s stomach rumbles. 

He looks to her, smile spilling over his cheeks unbidden and sees a fond smile on her face in turn. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s such a fantastic puzzle.”

Her thumb rubs over the back of his hand, warm and almost tingling to feel. “It is,” she says. “I liked seeing your ideas.”

For a moment Vision is caught in that phrase, that Wanda was content to stay at his side and simply observe his thoughts, to see how he thinks and find that alone interesting enough to stay put. Then her stomach rumbles again.

“Lunch?” he asks. “Your stomach sounds starved.”

They make their way out slowly, occasionally a little sidetracked. While Wanda looks at a display about the interweaving of folklore, mythology and religious cosmology with the occult Vision mentally looks up nearby restaurants and calls ahead to make a booking. Wanda does not object when he takes the lead, just lifts her face to feel the soft rain when they emerge outside and leans slightly towards him as they walk down this street and that. Vision simply follows the map in his head until they come to a halt outside.

Wanda’s eyebrows are raised when she looks at him, and he shrugs. 

“I was curious,” he says, ready to find somewhere else. “I don’t think we’ve had Greek before.”

He needs not look for somewhere else. Wanda laughs and steps forward, pushes the door open and tugs Vision behind her and blinks only slightly in surprise when Vision mentions a reservation and they’re led to a booth at the back. It's rather cramped and Vision phases his legs almost intangible to give Wanda space.

“I could-” he says, and Wanda takes her hand in his.

“Don’t,” she says. “I like feeling you here.”

Even when they’re handed menus, she does not let go of his hand. Instead, her fingers circle patterns on his open palm, tapping his fingertips when he twitches at the ticklish sensation.

 

* * *

 

The drinks arrive, but Wanda’s hand doesn’t leave his. The food arrives, and even then her hand seems slow to leave. Vision almost wants to take her hand firmly in his, tangle their fingers together keep her close, but he doesn’t. He lets Wanda be as close or as distant as she likes, and revels in the nearness she chooses. They don’t speak much - then again, they do not need to, they are used to quiet company and even to silent company, those nights after Wanda does have nightmares - but sit in a gentle quietude. 

“It’s been a long time,” Wanda says, playing with something on her plate. “Since I’ve believed in anything.”

He pauses, swallows his food. He knows well what has started this train of thought, had considered it when he arranged the visit, but he does not think Wanda will appreciate direct questions. Instead, he clears the path before her, to let her choose what to say.

“Like what?” he asks. “In a cause? Or do you mean religion?”

Wanda does not look up, absorbed in the meatball on her plate. “Both, maybe,” she says. “I haven’t believed in a cause since Ultron, I think, and in religion since I was ten.”

And Vision knows why for both. He reaches out gently. Her free hand is almost cold, and so he wraps his fingers around hers, lifts her hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to her knuckles. He strokes a thumb over the back of her hand, and lets them sit in a kind of silence.

He thinks:  _ You do not have to say anything. _

He says, “If you would like, we could go to a synagogue.” He strokes the back of her hand again, considers his words, creates space to give her more choice, in case she’d rather go without him. “I’ve never been to any house of worship,” he admits. “If you would like to go I’d be happy to join you, if you wanted company.”

The smile she gives almost takes his breath away, and some part of him thinks:  _ If I needed breath I would be in trouble. _ “Vizh,” she says. Her fork clinks softly on the plate. “Maybe,” she agrees. “It would be nice to hear it all again.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s smile stays soft and warm, something full of warmth and fondness Vision finds the same welling up inside him stronger than almost ever. He thinks the only time he has felt as strongly as this was when he carried her from Novi Grad and he cannot be sure of that, with how little he grasped emotions then. 

Wanda, he thinks, is easy to care strongly for - she pulls all his empathy out towards her with her own outpouring of it towards him.

He picks at the baklavas Wanda orders for dessert, trying to be careful with the pieces of nut and flakes of pastry that inevitably get everywhere. Wanda, somehow, manages to eat them without a single crumb going astray; he is quite certain he is not nearly as lucky.

“I was thinking,” he says. “Homunculi and familiars. All stories come from origins, and sometimes those origins are other stories.”

“Like witches,” Wanda says. “Vizh, you have a little-”

He catches the pieces of nut and the honey-rosewater that stuck them to his cheek and licks them from his fingers. “Thank you.”

“You were thinking?”

He considers, briefly, giving the full explanation now, but more people are coming in so his hand reaches for hers. Her hand meets his, twines their fingers together as he’d wanted to earlier and he can’t help the way his smile broadens. “Let’s get the bill,” he says instead. “I’ll tell you on the way home.”

He does not miss the way she brightens at that.  _ Home. _

 

* * *

 

“You were thinking?” Wanda prompts as they step outside. Their hands are still interlinked between them, and Vision starts leading them away, towards the nearest bus stop down a route that will be empty enough they can talk almost freely.

“Witches,” he says, smiling almost teasingly. “Like you.”

Her shoulder bumps briefly against his. “I’m not a witch, Vizh.”

His smile becomes a grin, and he pushes a little against her shoulder as she leans against him. “Maybe so,” he says. “But witches and familiars, alchemists and homunculi, alchemy as the birth of science…” he lets himself trail off, waves a vague hand. “You know. Created things to prove a profession.”

“So which are you?” Wanda asks. “If I am the witch in this.”

Vision keeps his smile to himself this time, that Wanda is willing to play this teasing game, that she feels safe enough after all their long day and reminders of a history she had to give up to still play this with him. He shrugs, rubs her hand with his thumb. “I’m a homunculus of science,” he says. “But all of my makers barring Helen tie back to you.”

“A homunculus made by a witch,” Wanda says.

“Or…,” he trails off, teasing, tries to see if she will dip into his head to take the answer, or if she’ll let him finish. “There’s a simpler answer.”

“Oh?” she says. One eyebrow rises and the warmth swells in him again. His smile broadens.

“Maybe I’m your familiar.”

She doesn’t laugh. She does stop still. When he looks at her face he sees something warm and shining there, something that sings out to the same in him, some huge wave of warmth and love, fondness and affection, trust and safety and laughter and simple joy, unbridled from any fear or worry that his words might be the wrong ones. He smiles down at her as she looks at him, and part of him wants to simply let the emotion spill out but he holds himself back and waits for her.

“Vizh,” she says softly, and he feels the scarlet warm against his palm as she sings what she’s feeling into his mind, “What emotion is this?”

Bright. Bright and almost blinding is what the emotion is, bright and as warm as their bed and as sunlight, and as the warmth in his chest at her smile right now, so similar he almost cannot distinguish what he feels from what she has shown him. 

“I don’t know,” he says, and he holds her hand in his and finds that the warmth of her hand feels much the same to the warmth bright and golden in his chest. “But it's what I’m feeling too.”

 

* * *

 

They do not rush home. They want to, he can feel it in how Wanda’s hand tugs on his, in how widely she smiles, in the near-ache of the smile on his own face. They curl close together on the bus, and it seems as though the world around them senses their urgency for nothing seems slow, and yet nothing seems to fast either - it is a pace matched to the beat of their hearts.

The stairs seem an odd obstacle, and they both stumble because they do not want to let go of each other’s hands, do not want to stray from being so closely side-by-side, and so they dance around each other as Wanda unlocks the door, as he pushes it shut until they are stood on the doormat staring at each other. Wanda’s eyes are full - of emotion, of a single question, and Vision’s hand squeezes hers.

“I’m still feeling it,” he says.

Her lips are warm on his. Warm, warm, warm, everything about this is warmth, warmth like the sun rising, warmth like their shared bed, warmth like joy and happiness and love, and he feels her hands on his neck, her fingers around the ears he made for himself, as they tangle in the hair of his disguise, and he sighs to feel it, to feel  _ her. _

“Wanda,” he says, but if anything it is a breath not a word because he does not think he has words, now, not for this, this feeling so bright and warm that fills him until he is a cup spilling over with emotion. Her lips find his again, and he leans into it, welcomes the warmth she offers and shows it in turn, the warmth they share between them, the warmth they both feel now.

Warmth. Joy. Happiness. Love. Her hands find the collar of his coat and pull.

“Coat,” she whispers and its almost impatient and he is so full of feeling he cannot but laugh against her neck. He vanishes his coat, and wonders if Wanda will ask him to vanish more. 

His hands have not strayed from her hips, not since their lips met, but she leads them back through the room, some perfect memory or perfect understanding guiding her around the sofa and low table towards their bedroom. His fingers slip through the loops on her jeans, his thumbs trace circles on the skin of her abdomen and he follows her gladly.

“Wanda,” he whispers, and cannot tear his eyes from her, not when she is bright like this - bright with her power is one thing, something terrifying and beautiful like an old angel, one crying out  _ fear not _ , but this is simply  _ warm, _ simply  _ good, _ and he feels like a needle caught by the strength of a magnet as she watches him with equal feeling.

“Vizh,” she says and he almost shivers. He kisses her again, because she is close and unafraid and then she is kissing back and his mind repeats the nickname like a mantra, a thing she gave him freely, a thing so very human. Her hands tug at his shirt and he is so full of warmth and joy that he laughs again, and vanishes it as well. 

“If only mine were as easily got rid of,” she murmurs.

He pulls back, looks her in the eye and lets the joy ebb a moment so she can know that he speaks no lies, offers nothing but truth as he asks, “Do you trust me?”

Her eyes are wide, yes, startled, yes, but utterly, utterly unafraid. She pulls him close, presses a kiss to his lips that lingers and leaves him leaning more towards her than ever as she pauses just long enough to ask, “Would I do this if I did not?”

He laughs. He can’t help it. He nuzzles a kiss to her collarbone, a kiss to her neck, a kiss to her jaw. He takes ahold of her shirt and her jeans, rests a hand on her skin, and phases his hand just through cloth enough that he can extend himself to phase them too, and tugs them away in the split moment that he pulls Wanda into the phase with him.

Her lips find his as soon as they are solid again, and she pulls him back with her as her legs hit the bed. She falls back as though she planned this, as though she followed the same memory that led her through the main room. He catches himself above her, half with hands, half with phasing but her hands find him again and pulls him close so she can kiss him. He lets himself fall closer, remembers Wanda’s words at lunch and lets go of the phase completely. 

“Protection,” Wanda says, and it takes him but a moment to create a condom.

“We don’t know if that is necessary for us,” he says. “Given everything, but-”

Wanda smiles and kisses him. “Better safe than sorry,” she says and he does not disagree.

He leans to kiss her and groans when she catches his lip in her teeth, presses close to her. His hands find her underwear, tangle as though to phase. “Wanda,” he says. “May I?”

He feels her nod and pulls them all into the phase for a moment, and he loves this, that she trusts him for this, that her scarlet does not fight his phase, that with his phase for a bare moment he can almost feel all of her in his hands. They fall out of the phase and back to physicality, and Wanda’s skin is soft beneath his hands. He can feel her trembling but knows its not due to fear. Her lips are warm on his cheek, along his jaw. He can feel her hands by the ears he has made himself, in the hair he has made himself, and when he sinks into her and his guise falters her fingers slide gladly over his scalp, unflinching and unafraid.

“Vizh,” she whispers, “Vizh,” and he presses close, presses in, and all the warmth rises, the sunlight of it shines as bright as a supernova and he feels Wanda’s hands against his bare and undisguised scalp, her thumbs tracing the metal patterns of his skin. He nuzzles close and murmurs her name against the skin of her neck like some kind of prayer.

For a moment they are still. For a moment they stay frozen together, Vision thinks, but for the fact they are so warm that ice could not touch them. He nuzzles her neck, presses kisses to the skin there and he feels… he thinks this warmth is contentment, of such a warm and blinding kind he did not know he could feel.

Wanda’s legs wrap around his hips, her lips find his cheek, and when she pulls him close he feels her lips not just on the skin of his disguise but on  _ his _ skin, unafraid and unhesitating.

He thinks he loses track of time, or maybe it is that time loses meaning. He remembers the feel of Wanda’s skin on his, of her body soft beneath his fingers, of how she trembles against him and the feel of her lips trailing kisses along the skin of his arm. He remembers snatches and moments, the feel of Wanda’s breath against his neck, the soft sound of her cries as she pulls him closer.

He remembers sunlight and warmth and when they are done he curls against Wanda’s side as she curls against him, and they doze in peace and contentment.

 

* * *

 

They doze gladly. Vision thinks that, for perhaps a few minutes, Wanda even sleeps, her body curved into his just as his is around hers. He wonders, vaguely, if they miss him back at base - it has been three weeks, now, the longest he has spent away and perhaps he should not have turned off his transponder but he did not  _ want _ to be found, not truly. His fingers tangle absently in Wanda’s hair. He thinks: why would I want to be found, when I have finally found who I am, and what makes me happy?

But they likely will be missing him, for he’s never usually away so long and he knows that he will have to return, and spend time away from Wanda again and he doesn’t want to, not usually and after the day they have shared…

He thinks he could stay with Wanda, quite contented, possibly forever, so he curls around her, and they rest.

When they do finally move, it is dark out - early evening and in the windows across the street they can see silhouettes pulling shut curtains through the gauzy things Wanda likes to keep at the windows to create some sense of privacy. Wanda looks up at him from her pillow, and leans her cheek into his touch when he traces along her jaw.

“We have some time,” he says. “I don’t have to leave until the morning. Do you want to-”

Wanda shakes her head, her eyes half-close. “Stay,” she says. “Sleep.”

She looks so content and yet so insistent he laughs and leans to kiss her. “Pyjamas then,” he says, and conjures something close enough to cover himself while Wanda fishes clothes out of drawers. When she is done she curls against him again, her cheek to his collarbone, and he can feel her lips against his jaw. He lets out a long breath, and simply relaxes.

“Sleep,” she murmurs, and her fingers twine with his. “We have time. We have next time.”   
  
Her eyes are drifting shut and Vision presses a kiss to her cheek.

 

* * *

 

He wakes from an odd dream. Or… part of a dream. He never remembers them completely, but he doesn’t mind it. Wanda, at his side, is still sleeping, curled against him, warm and peaceful, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, their legs tangled. 

He pulls away carefully, puts the kettle on, makes tea. When he returns Wanda is awake, and she takes the tea gratefully.

Its night outside, dark but for the streetlamps. Dark and mundane, normal and lovely for it.

He does not expect the pain when it hits him.

  
  


* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the film the two go to see is Shape of Water, because you can't tell me Wanda and Vision wouldn't go to see the Shape of Water. As before the exhibit towards the end is based on the Harry Potter History of Magic exhibit, just broadened in scope. Vision also makes use of quotes in some of his sections, because he's got a good dose of both Ultron and JARVIS and you can't tell me he wouldn't know weird bits of literature.
> 
> As for quotes from the films, those are from [this transcript of AOU](http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Avengers:_Age_of_Ultron) and [this transcript of CACW](http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_America:_Civil_War). I felt they were appropriate, as Vision likely has far better memory than most people and would be able to recall words said that others might forget.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this! If you liked anything in particular, please do leave comments, or come talk to me over on [Tumblr](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/)!


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